CHAPTER XXXII.
THE SLEEP AND THE DEATH OF PLANTS.
When the cold weather comes some plants die, and some go to sleep for the winter.
Most plants die in the fall.
Some plants always die in the fall. Corn dies; so does the bean-vine. And so do many other plants. In order to have such plants another year, we keep some of their seeds to put into the ground in the spring.
How trees sleep in the winter.
But some plants sleep in the winter. Look at a tree. Its branches are all bare. It seems as if it had no life in it. But there is life there, and it will show itself next spring. Its life is asleep, just as I told you it is in the seed before it is put into the ground. Its sap is all quiet in the pipes. The mouths in the roots have stopped their busy work. The buds all over the tree are asleep in their “winter-cradles.” The wind rocks them back and forth, but never wakes them up.
How much life there is asleep in that tree! The buds are all there which are to make all that you will see on it the next summer. They are covered up snugly from the cold in their winter coats. The little things are very still, but they are alive. They only want a warm sun to make them show it. As soon in the spring as they feel the warmth through their coats, they begin to swell, as I have told you in another chapter, and soon open their coats and go to work to make leaves, and flowers, and fruits. A great work they do after their long winter sleep. Look up into a tree in summer and see how these leaf-buds have filled every branch with leaves. You can hardly believe that it is the same tree that you saw so bare in the winter.
Life asleep in roots.
Some plants die down to the ground, and their roots live through the winter. You know that this is the way with tulips and daffodils. They come up in the spring from the roots that have been in the ground all the winter. So, too, do the beautiful crocuses, that peep up so early in spring that they often get covered with snow. The roots of grass, too, live in the earth through the winter.
The life in these roots is asleep through the winter, just as it is in the trees and bushes. Their little mouths do not drink up any sap. How much life there is asleep in the winter covered up in the earth!